Toward the close of the year 602, the Emperor Maurice, now a stricken old man of sixty-three, was driven from his throne by the brutal Phocas; his five boys were murdered before his eyes and he was himself executed. Phocas sent messengers to apprise Gregory of his accession. We may assume that these messengers would give a discreet account of what had happened and, possibly, bring an assurance of the new Emperor's orthodoxy; and we do not know whether Gregory's assiduous servants at Constantinople sent him any independent account. Yet, when we have made every possible allowance, Gregory's letters to Phocas are painful. The first letter[110] begins, "Glory be to God on high," and sings a chant of victory culminating in, "Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad." The bloody and unscrupulous adventurer must have been himself surprised. Two months later, Gregory wrote again, hailing the dawn of "the day of liberty" after the night of tyranny.[111] In another letter he[112] saluted Leontia, the new Empress,—a fit consort of Phocas,—as "a second Pulcheria"; and he commended the Church of St. Peter's to her generosity. These two letters were written seven months after the murders, and it is impossible to suppose that no independent report had reached Gregory by that time. Nor do we find that, though he lived for a year afterwards, he ever undid those lamentable letters. It is the most ominous presage of the Middle Ages.
Gregory died on March 12, 604. The racking pains of gout had been added to his maladies, and plague and famine and Lombards continued to enfeeble Italy He had striven heroically to secure respect for ideals—for religion, justice, and honour—in that dark world on which his last thoughts lingered. He had planted many a good man in the bishoprics of Europe. He had immensely strengthened the Papacy, and a strong central power might do vast service in that anarchic Europe. Yet the historian must recognize that the world was too strong even for his personality; simony and corruption still spread from Gaul to Africa, and the ideas which Gregory most surely contributed to the mind of Europe were those more lamentable or more casuistic deductions from his creed which we have noticed. Within a year or so—to make the best we can of a rumour which has got into the chronicles—the Romans themselves grumbled that his prodigal charity had lessened their share of the patrimonies, and we saw that more bitter complaints against him were current in the Middle Ages. Yet he was a great Pope: not great in intellect, not perfect in character, but, in an age of confusion, corruption, and cowardice, a mighty protagonist of high ideals.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Another of them, Gelasius (492-496), is, or was until recently, regarded as the author of the first canon of Scriptures and the first list of prohibited books. But this so-called "Gelasian Decree" does not bear the name of Gelasius in some of the older manuscripts, and is now much disputed. Father Grisar thinks that "we may take it as certain that it did not emanate from him" (History of Rome and the Popes, iii., 236). The canon is probably due to Damasus (see p. 36) and the rather loosely written list of books which follows it is ascribed to the later age of Hormisdas (514-523). Gelasius was an able and vigorous Pope, and would hardly issue so poor a decree.
[78] Lives of Gregory must be read with discretion. The best and most ample source of knowledge is the stout volume of his letters, but there are early biographies by Paul the Deacon and John the Deacon. Paul wrote about 780, but his fairly sober sketch—into which miracles have been interpolated—does not help us much. John wrote about a century after this, and his fantastic and utterly undiscriminating work is almost useless. The best biography of Gregory is the learned and generally candid work of W.F.H. Dudden (Gregory the Great, 2 vols., 1905).
[79] Ep., ix., 69.
[80] See Dudden's Gregory the Great, i., 264-276.
[81] Ep., vi., 54.
[82] Dr. H.A. Mann (The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, 1902, etc.) would show that Gregory had a regard for culture by quoting much praise of secular learning from the Commentary on the First Book of Kings. This is not a work of Gregory at all. Even the Benedictine editors of the Migne edition claim only that it was written by an admirer who took notes of Gregory's homilies, and they admit that it frequently departs from Gregory's ideas.
[83] See John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, ii., 26. It is difficult to conceive that so unflattering a tradition was entirely an invention.